Wise Man Of The West (Harvill Press Editions)

by Vincent Cronin

  In mid-winter the journey, of some five hundred miles, proved a formidable undertaking. He travelled cross-country on horseback. Since the network of rivers and canals provided adequate cheap communication, little care was given to roads, which remained vague, sometimes indecipherable vestiges across the limitless plain. The horse’s unshod pace was slow and, after so many mild winters, the sharp weather began to tell. Near Yangchow he contracted dysentery but refused to delay. When the pain became insufferable he would dismount and lie for a time on the snow-covered ground, then force himself to resume.

  At Soochow, a Chinese Venice, he was told that his friend had gone to stay at a pagoda in the nearby town of Tanyang. Drawing on his last reserves of strength, Ricci covered the fifty miles in a state almost of collapse. Reaching the rose-red walls with their cap of snow, he dragged himself across the threshold. Not since his attack of malaria had he felt so ill. As though in delirium he heard Sutras being intoned to the tinkling of triangles and beating of the wooden fish, and smelled the acrid incense which, despite his struggles, slowly wrapped him in a winding-sheet of darkness.

  chapter seven

  A Banquet in Nanking

  For several days Ricci lay at the point of death in his disciple’s room. Ch’ü had given him the single bed, while he slept on the ground—never for more than an hour or two at a time, for like a son he tended Ricci untiringly. His welcome had been worthy of the journey: as warm, Ricci thought, as any in Italy. No remedy, no food was too difficult to procure, nothing too much for his comfort. Most efficacious of all was Ch’ü’s affection, which ended his exile, made him once more belong on this far side of the world. By the end of January 1599 he had recovered sufficient strength to make plans. Ch’ü promised help in establishing a residence at Soochow, where, he claimed, foreigners would be treated with less suspicion than at Nanking.

  At the beginning of February, during the Holiday Moon, master and disciple visited the southern capital, to obtain from Wang and other important officials, friends of Ch’ü, letters of favour to the Soochow magistrates. As they were about to enter the north-east gate, Ricci stopped in amazement. It was the very image of one of the storeyed portals he had seen in his vision almost four years before. He felt certain, then, that despite his plans for Soochow, he was destined to remain in the capital. When they passed into the city, he found the old atmosphere of alarm and suspicion gone. News had just arrived of the death of Hideyoshi, the militant Japanese minister who had unleashed hostilities in Korea. An armistice had been concluded and Japanese troops had withdrawn from the peninsula.

  They took lodgings in a pagoda near the centre of the city. Ricci’s visit to offer presents to the Emperor was the talk of Nanking. Most people approved the attempt and thought that only the state of war had prevented their being received. Wang was very favourably impressed by Ricci’s courage in travelling south alone and by the praise he received from Ch’ü. Aware that the foreigner was making a name and that to pose as patron would redound to his honour, Wang urged Ricci to remain in Nanking, ordered two of his suite to look for a house, and invited him to his home for a few days during the festivities of the lanterns, on the tenth of February.

  To welcome the first full moon of the new year the Flowery Kingdom spoke the language of the stars. Every building, boat and trinitarian gateway became a constellation; every living thing was recreated in light. Cocks, sinuous fish and horses on wheels, asters and dwarf trees, the goddess of mercy with a child in her arms—all were refashioned, as though for an aeon of darkness, in paper and silk lanterns, red, pink, blue and green—every colour but yellow—each with its flame-like soul, to be trailed in procession throughout the rejoicing city.

  The mandarins devised more complex sport. At Wang’s garden Ricci watched a display of fireworks, those of Nanking being the most famous of China, and found himself transported to a mythical realm of metempsychosis and shifting truth. Dragons ascended and were changed into fire-breathing lions; a huge spotted crake fluttered in the air and its beak gave birth to a flaming serpent; a chest was hoisted high only to dissolve in countless strings of lanterns; finally Wang’s house became the mandarin himself seated in his sedan between equerries, banners and fans—a picture nailed to the night by hissing, multi-coloured flame. In this way the abundant saltpetre, which in Europe would have been turned into gunpowder, was used for no more harmful purpose than the bombardment of moon and stars. Putting the truth into figures, Ricci calculated that in a single year at Nanking alone more saltpetre was consumed for fireworks than during a three-year war in Europe.

  This third visit proved as successful as the other two had been vain. He was visited by the very highest mandarins, including the Minister of Finance, the President of the Academy of Nobles and, most important of all, the Censor, who already knew Ricci’s little book on Friendship. All insisted that he remain in Nanking. Every day he received offers of suitable houses, where seven months before not even a lodging had been available. Ricci recognised the hand of God. He told Ch’ü that, despite the attractions of Soochow, it seemed better to stay in the southern capital. As soon as an opportunity arose, he would start once again for his ultimate goal, Peking.

  Until the arrival of Cattaneo, Ricci rented a small house where he could receive visitors. He would test the strength of his position: if the welcome were more than ephemeral, he would be justified in buying a larger building. Meanwhile Wang lent him furniture from one of his palaces.

  Drawing on his experience at Nanchang, he now began a form of apostolate which aimed to convince his friends of the superiority of European science, in order to give authority to his religious doctrine. So great was Chinese pride, so inbred their hostility to foreign teaching, that until they were convinced empirically that they had no monopoly of truth, they would dismiss superciliously a theology and revelation which could never be proved to their senses. At Shiuhing, even at Shiuchow, he had hoped single-handed to spread the wild-fire of Christianity. He knew now that the conversion of China would probably be a long process; that his role was to sow rather than harvest. Repressing his eagerness to speak of the one paramount subject, he let it be known in Nanking that he would teach mathematics.

  The Chinese picture of the world took as its first premise a sentence from the oldest astronomical book: “What is square belongs to the earth; what is round belongs to heaven: for the sky is round and the earth is square.” Cosmology, eclipses, the movement of sun and moon, were explained by a similar mixture of myth and magic. There were said to be five elements, metal, wood, fire, water and earth, one born out of the other, called the five travellers, because in continual movement. Air was considered simply a vacuum.

  Ricci now began to teach that the earth was a globe, exceeded in size by the sun; that there were ten celestial orbs, superimposed, each with its inlaid stars, and moving according to the different principles; that the altitude of the pole varied according to the zones of the earth. In a short book entitled The Four Elements he corrected their views about the nature of matter.

  His first pupils were two graduates. With the more brilliant, a young man sent by a doctor of letters and amateur mathematician who wished to learn Ricci’s views but was unable to attend in person, Ricci became intimate, even confiding that his ultimate purpose was to refute Buddhism and replace it by Christianity. His pupil replied, “It is unnecessary to refute Buddhism. Simply continue to teach mathematics. When my people learn the truth about the world, they will see for themselves the falsity of Buddhist books.” This was becoming Ricci’s own opinion, for the Buddhist scriptures were full of palpably untrue myths about the universe. Thus, in order to explain the alternation of day and night, they claimed that at night the sun hid under Mount Sumeru, which had its roots twenty-four thousand miles under the sea. This holy mountain, a variant of Olympus—for the Greek myth had spread across Asia—formed the axis of the world, at the corners of which lay four continents, of which only the two southern ones, India and China, were habi
table.

  On the day of a solar eclipse, as Ricci had himself witnessed, the mandarins, warned in advance, paraded in their robes and all the inhabitants of China were assembled by townships, prostrate on the ground, to frighten away with cymbals, drums and an outroar of yelling the monster that would otherwise swallow the sun. While official opinion sanctioned the myth of a monster, the Buddhists held that one of the Lohans caused an eclipse of the sun by covering it with his right hand, of the moon with his left, and many of the graduates believed that during an eclipse of the moon the planet, coming face to face with the sun, grew dim with fear.

  If Chinese theories of the world were fabulous and their mathematics rudimentary, a passionate belief in astrology had produced a reasonably practical astronomy. If no one cared how and why the stars moved, it was important at least to know and predict their courses. Both Nanking and Peking possessed colleges of mathematicians, attached to the imperial palace where between twenty and thirty eunuchs, paid by the Emperor, continually observed the stars. Maintained as astrologers rather than astronomers, they had very little social standing. Whenever a comet or other strange phenomenon appeared, they wrote to the Emperor stating what had happened and explaining its significance. They also predicted eclipses, usually inaccurately, and when events did not correspond with their forecasts claimed that they had been correct, and that the disturbance, occasioned by some fault of the Son of Heaven, augured national calamity. On these occasions the Emperor—in whom the cosmos and all men’s destinies met—was required to examine his conscience.

  As Ricci’s reputation grew, members of the Nanking college began to worry lest he render their existence superfluous. One day they approached his favourite pupil and asked Ricci’s intentions. The young man, with all a disciple’s fervour, replied, “The graduate preacher is so great a man in his own country that he would not deign to accept the highest office in the Middle Kingdom, far less so insignificant a one as yours.” At this the eunuchs grew less afraid and even paid Ricci flattering visits, careful, however, not to reveal their ignorance by speaking a word of astronomy. In return Ricci was able to obtain an invitation to their observatory, a group of old buildings on a high hill within the city. Here, night after night, the timid, underpaid eunuchs watched for shooting stars and comets, reading the destiny of the Flowery Kingdom in that other supremely important firework display.

  When he entered the observatory, Ricci received the surprise of his life. Instead of the pretentious semi-magical charts he had expected, there stood four magnificent heavy instruments of cast bronze, decorated with coiled imperial dragons, finer than any he had seen in Europe: a sphere for determining eclipses marked with degrees according to the European system but in Chinese characters, an armillary sphere, a gnomon and, largest of all, a complex sphere composed of three or four astrolabes, fitted with alidade and dioptra. Ricci turned to the chief eunuch.

  “Who made these fine instruments?” he asked.

  “A Mohammedan astronomer—about two hundred and fifty years ago, under the Tartars.”

  Again Ricci was astonished. He already knew that Mohammedans from Central Asia had settled in China, but not that scientists had been among them.

  “I did not imagine you were so well equipped,” he said.

  After examining the armillary sphere, he pointed to one of the graduated arms. “Is that where you read the shadow?”

  The eunuch approached, dwarfed by the huge instrument. He looked puzzled, then nodded. Resisting the astronomer’s efforts to lead him away, Ricci continued his inspection. He noticed with approval that degrees were indicated by a system of knobs which could be read at night by touch. Then he made a startling discovery.

  “Surely Nanking stands at 32 degrees?” he asked.

  The eunuch agreed.

  “But these instruments are set for 36 degrees.” The eunuch did not answer and tried to divert his guest’s attention. Intrigued, Ricci put two or three simple questions about the gnomon, to all of which he received evasive answers. At last, seeing that Ricci had found him out, the chief eunuch turned away from the gnomon.

  “They’re beautiful instruments,” he said unhappily, “but we don’t know how to use them.” He added, “Two sets were made, one for Peking, the other for Pingyang. These have come from Pingyang.”

  Then Ricci understood. Evidently Pingyang stood at 36 degrees, and the instruments had never been adjusted. They were no more than museum pieces.

  He learned from the eunuchs that some astronomical knowledge had come to China by way of the Arabs. The imperial college was divided into two schools, one following the few surviving translations of Arab books, the other ancient Chinese teaching. China, then, had acquired its preliminary knowledge of the Ptolemaic system from the same source as Europe, and at about the same date. Whereas in the West it had been enthusiastically received and developed, here, where science, unconducive to the good life or good government, was not included in the approved list of studies, it had declined to such a point that fine instruments were mere relics, their purpose not even understood.

  Although during these first months in Nanking most of his time was spent teaching mathematics, Ricci took occasion to discuss more important topics. Familiarity with the writings of Confucius, of Buddhism and Taoism, had convinced him that his best hope of spreading Christianity was to ally himself with Confucianism, which in almost all respects harmonised with Christian principles. Its lines, like those of a Chinese building, were horizontal: a system of right conduct between men, it had little to say of man’s relations with God. Ricci therefore presented Christianity as an essentially reasonable theology completing and perfecting those principles in Confucianism which conformed to natural reason.

  Buddhism and Taoism, on the other hand, as they were practised in China, were idolatrous religions with their own pantheons, which could less easily be adapted to Christianity. While praising many of the principles of Confucius, at the same time Ricci continued to attack Buddhist and Taoist superstitions. This surprised the graduates. In their history books were stories of Indians and Mohammedans who had preached in China: but all had attacked Confucianism and praised the idolaters.

  One day a certain Li Pen-ku, a Buddhist of seventy-four with a reputation for sanctity, invited Ricci to dinner, the recognised occasion for serious argument. The invitation took the form of a visiting book in which Li wrote that he had washed the goblets and prepared a modest repast of herbs for the next evening. “I should be pleased to hear the Far Westerner express his ideas, from which the company will certainly gather some jewels of wisdom.” Ricci excused himself, saying it was a day of fasting, for he did not want to prejudice his delicate position by disputing in public. But Li was insistent and twice sent a servant to say that he was expecting Ricci, for whom he had special food. Ch’ü advised Ricci to go, otherwise Li would take the refusal as an insult.

  Li had also invited a famous bonze called Huang San-hui, a distinguished-looking man of fifty-four, with a high brow, burning eyes and square jaw, dressed, a trifle ostentatiously, in the poorest clothes. He had published several volumes of poetry and possessed a good knowledge of the three main sects. While the other guests were arriving—some twenty-five had been invited—Ricci was introduced to Huang. The bonze suggested that they should discuss religion. Ricci agreed.

  “However,” he said, “before we begin, I should like to know your beliefs. Whom do you consider the first principle of all things, the Lord of heaven and earth and all creation?”

  Huang replied, “I believe there is such a creator, but he is not omnipotent. Each one of us is, in every respect, as great as that Lord.”

  In some surprise Ricci answered, “That is a claim for which you must surely give proof. Can you do the things the creator has done?”

  “Certainly,” boasted Huang. “I am able to create heaven and earth.”

  Ricci smiled and reflected a moment or two.

  “I don’t want to give you the trouble of creating an
other heaven and another earth, but I should like to see you make—let us say, a brazier, like that one over there.” He pointed to a metal vessel holding burning charcoal, installed to warm the guests.

  Huang looked at him disdainfully, “You have no right to make such a demand. Do you think I’m an artisan?”

  He began to lament that foreigners really were too gross, that his claim had been put forward only in a spiritual sense.

  Ricci, raising his voice above Huang’s, said, “You should not promise what you cannot fulfil.”

  Other guests, sipping their tea before dinner began, enquired the drift of the argument. Ch’ü, who had been listening to every word, repeated the conversation and Ricci’s challenge, which the majority of guests said was justified.

  Huang began to explain his position. “I have heard that you are a great astronomer,” he said to Ricci in starched language. “Are you also a mathematician?”

  “I have some knowledge of that science.”

  “When you speak of the sun and moon, do you go up to heaven where those planets are, or do they come down into your breast?”

  “Neither one nor the other,” Ricci answered. “When we see something, we form in our minds a copy of the thing seen. Later, when we wish to think or speak of it, we look in our minds at these images we have already formed.”